Every Last Memory
by wild-sunshine
Summary: Everything is almost the same, but everything is still wrong. Slash Ezio/Leonardo, Shaun/Desmond. Oneshot.


Did you read "from the angel" and go "oh, man, I wish this was more depressing and dark, I'm not _nearly _sad enough!" (you probably didn't) but if so, this is the fic for you!

Also, if you didn't, that's no excuse not to read it- read it because you love me!

(I think I should teach ego classes).

The Italian is probably off. Translator, because my grammar is awful. For which I'm very sorry.

Don't forget- there are exciting story extras at therealwholestory . blogspot . com! (minus spaces) So you should totally check that out.

I love you! Enjoy!

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_ (Something must be wrong.)_

Ezio knows this field. He passes through it every time he comes home, through hills that roll up and bow before the villa. The path that winds through them is wide, expansive like the men who made it expected there to be a parading arrival of a king, in the same way that at the very end of the garden behind the villa, the wall is covered with a lacing of roses, back where no one ever goes.

"È bello qui," Lino murmurs beside him. He follows Ezio off the path, weaving back through the hills, through the calendula, little suns blooming among the bright green. It's here, sunshine pooling all around, that they hide amongst the flowers, and Ezio kisses Lino soft and gentle.

Lino does not pause to count the petals on a calendula.

_(Maybe it's the wrong time. It can't be too far in the past, though, it must be somewhere else)._

The villa is always silent and empty, dominated by the grand staircase and the high ceiling. The first door on the right opens with a creak; no one comes through this room very often. Claudia's desk still sits by the window, all the books and files lined up like they're waiting for her to come and impatiently fling them around again. The table with the model of all of Monterrigoni has started to gather dust, and some of the paint has flaked off.

"Una replica perfetta," Lino says, as Ezio traces his fingertip across the tiny walls around the villa. "Utile." The architect left his clipboard on a table; he has long since been given his own shop. Ezio doesn't know how the architect could want to leave this room; as difficult as it is to make himself walk in, Ezio never wants to leave.

"Sì," he murmurs. There's delight in Lino's grey eyes, but it's not the minute beauty that's interested him; Lino is an engineer, and he marvels at the scale, the dimensions.

There's still an easel in the corner.

The canvas is blank. Ezio hasn't been able to decide which sight would be worse – the space empty of the easel, or this blank canvas, which will be empty forever.

Lino does not ask to paint the tiny figurines on the table.

_("I think it's farther in the future than I've been before." _

_ "How far?" _

_ Not enough, he thinks). _

The gate is always closed now. When Ezio and his family lived here, back when they were _whole, _the gate was always open. The last time Ezio left, he wasn't able to bring himself to close it. Leaving it open made it feel like he'd be coming back, like there was still reason to leave it open, for his father's clients, his mother when she left to visit a friend, Claudia as she skipped off to melt hearts, Petruccio on his way to collect feathers, Ezio himself as he ran after Federico, both off breaking hearts and climbing to the rooftops, knowing they deserved the best view of the sky.

Now, Ezio stands before the iron gate, and he can't even see the bench under the flowers, where his mother used to sit and read, where Claudia wooed gentlemen, where Federico once jumped off, trying to swing on the hanging flower pots.

"Quando hai vissuto qui?" Lino asks from beside Ezio.

"Molto tempo fa," Ezio replies, still looking into the courtyard. All he can see is the door, which is not even the same colour. Lino looks at the street around them, fascinated by everything. He rarely comes to Firenze, always seems to look around corners as if expecting to see canals.

Lino does not ask to see the inside of the house.

_("What precisely has you so shaken up about it? We can easily resituate –"_

_ "It's not that…" _

_ "Could you be any less forthcoming with the answer?"_

_ "It's different," he manages, "it's all the same, but it's different. It's wrong"). _

Firenze was centered around one single building, in Ezio's mind. He knew how to get there from everywhere. Ezio stops before turning down the street, and from here, he can see the boarded-up well, surrounded by tiny shops with doorways that overshadow the small buildings. In the dark, he can barely make out the line of the wall that surrounds the courtyard within. He can't see the workshop door.

"Ciò che è qui?"

"Niente, Lino" Ezio answers, because this place used to be something, and it's not anymore. Most of the places Ezio loved are like this – whatever they once were, it's gone now. Really, just about _everything _that Ezio loves is this way – irreversibly different, gone, lost to whatever it as that took them away.

Ezio leads Lino down the street, to this little circle of shops he knows so well. Lino sits on the edge of the shallow, wood-bottomed well, looks at the darkened windows around them, unaware that one door used to always be unlocked, for Ezio.

Lino does not try to create a garden in the well.

_("It doesn't seem like… it can't be more than two years later. Maybe not even that." _

_ "What makes you think that, precisely? Did something change?" _

_ "He's gone."_

_ "Who?")._

The countryside stretches all the way to the horizon. When he was younger, Ezio thought it kept going forever, that the whole world was this beautiful. He was crushingly disappointed when he traveled through it, and found the end.

The meadows are still filled with tiny primroses, tangling through the wooden fences that wind through the fields in lazy arcs, evading the slender trees. These are the only tools of wayfinding to be found here, and Ezio knows exactly which tree to pass, which fence to climb over, and where the ground begins to dip down into a shallow valley. The sun is high overhead when they sit next to the fence with the board that's fallen down, and Lino leans over to kiss him, sweet and sympathetic. He says nothing. Everything around Ezio is all the same; it's as if here, nothing changes.

Lino does not tell Ezio he loves him.

_("Leonardo")_

There is always something new happening at the docks; people are arriving, shipments are leaving, crates being thrown, things falling into the water, fishermen with their quiet victories, dock workers with their loud directions. Today, there is no woman stranded on the rock in the middle of the lake. Right now, there are no ships bound for Venezia.

"Mi chiedo dove questa nave sta andando," Lino says, looking up at one of the ships.

"Non Venezia," Ezio says quietly, but Lino doesn't hear him. The docks swirl with movement around them, indifferent to their presence.

Ezio remembers getting on a ship, not caring where it was going. It could have been going anywhere in the world, and he would have gone willing, would have died if he couldn't.

He remembers the way Leonardo smiled at him, as the sun rose over the ocean.

Everything is so different now. Ezio thinks this every time he says Lino's name, this name that means _cry of grief, _just like how everything they are, this is Ezio's grieving for what he lost with Leonardo.

Lino does not mean the world to Ezio.

_("Where is he?"_

_ "I don't… I have no idea." _

_ "What's happening now?"_

_ There's no real way to tell him that the world is ending, slowly, painfully, a world on fire that is slowly burning out). _

The sky is a hazy grey, almost as dark as the water that sloshes in the canals, speckled by the rain that leaps across its surface. Venezia is cold, the streets emptied by the rain and the dark. Ezio has been standing before the workshop for a long time, shivering and soaked by the rain, but he can't move. The rain is the only sound, relentless and steady, like it'll never go away.

Lino is gone. Ezio had not been with him long, but every day he had with Lino was a day

Lino didn't know the love of his life, and Ezio couldn't hold onto him knowing that. He hadn't

been able to love Lino; Lino hadn't been able to erase the memory of Leonardo. Ezio had hoped

he would, hoped he'd be able to love Lino for that. As it turned out, Ezio couldn't overwrite the memories he had of Leonardo, couldn't try to duplicate them close enough to replace them entirely. Had he been successful, he would have hated Lino for it.

Ezio had tried for several months, to lose every single memory he has of Leonardo, but he's done trying, because to erase the memory of Leonardo would be to lose himself, more than he already has. Leonardo was the love of his life, and things were never meant to go so wrong. The world was supposed to protect them, because Ezio had already lost so many people he loved that he couldn't bear to lose the love of his life, because Leonardo was so perfect that he was all the hope Ezio had in the world.

The workshop is empty, and for all the times that Ezio has run to Leonardo, he doesn't know where to go now. He's been everywhere they'd ever been together, and Leonardo is no closer to him. They've been apart for three years, and it feels wrong, like time that was never meant to exist, not like this.

Ezio steps closer to the workshop, looks through one of the windows. The room is dark like it's never been before, and it's completely empty. This used to make Ezio angry, but he can't feel it anymore.

Everywhere he's been, he kept remembering. Remembering all the things Leonardo did, all that he said, the way he looked at Ezio, like he didn't want to be anywhere else, like where they were, together, was the best place in the world and he never wanted to leave.

Leonardo is gone, because Ezio lost him.

_("He's gone."_

_ "Did he ever come back?"_

_ "No," Desmond says, and it hurts, hurts like he'd lost Shaun, because that's how Ezio loved Leonardo – like he was the whole entire world, something infinitely beautiful and so, so invaluable). _

There's a morning in Venezia that Ezio remembers so, so well, because every morning that is nothing like it hurts.

Ezio had watched Leonardo paint, creating a cottage by the ocean, with an gate that hung open, twined with flowers. Leonardo saw beautiful things in his mind, not like Ezio, who saw all the terrible things he'd seen, things he'd done. All he really wants is to protect Leonardo from that, always. If he can have nothing else, he wants Leonardo never to feel the pain he's felt, losing so many people that he loves, seeing all the suffering the world can hold.

"Where is this?" Ezio had asked.

"This is where I want to live," Leonardo had said, "with you. Isn't it beautiful?" Appreciating beauty was such an ingrained part of him, that he made Ezio the same way, when they were together. Ezio felt _whole _when they were together. He'd never known this, finding that there was someone who fit with him perfectly, like they'd been designed for each other. It was comforting, knowing that he was always going to find Leonardo, because this, it can't have been any other way. This fits too perfectly.

This was the last morning they had together. Leonardo had kissed him and said _tonight, come back here, do you promise? _

Ezio has been trying for the last three years, but he's never going to be able to keep his last promise to Leonardo.

_("Never?" _

_ "Never."_

_ There's a silence, and then Shaun says "I promise that won't happen to us." _

_ "You can't promise that," Desmond says). _

Ezio's last memory of Leonardo is beautiful.

"I promise," Ezio had said. "Or will you not love me anymore if I don't?"

"Amore mio," Leonardo's laugh was Ezio's favourite sound in the world, and always will be. "Did you know that every day you've known me, I've loved you? How could I ever stop?"

"And yet, you couldn't tell I'd fallen in love with you the day I met you." Ezio had kissed Leonardo, the last time. "Promise me you'll always be like this."

"How?"

"Just like this, exactly how you are."

Leonardo had kept this last promise. Now, in Ezio's memories, he is exactly the same – the love of Ezio's life, a memory Ezio will revisit over and over again, every last one.

The last comfort in Ezio's world is the same as what brings him to his knees. He'll never forget Leonardo, because without Leonardo, he's lost himself.

_("At least…"_

_ "What?"_

_ "He had that time with him, so he… he knows what it's like, to be… whole. I'm just… I'm glad I know, I'm sure he was too")._

Ezio will never know what the rest of his life should have been like, with Leonardo. But his last memory, and every single one before it, is so beautiful that it makes everything worth it.

_(He had been right, though. Everything was wrong, because Ezio never should have had to know that there was a memory of Leonardo that truly was the last one). _

His memories of Leonardo save him. Amidst all the pain of losing Leonardo, though, Ezio knows that there was one promise the world did not break, one he'd sworn to give up anything for, and even though what he gave up was everything, Ezio is still so grateful that there is one promise the world kept.

Leonardo never lost him.

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End file.
